Interview with Jason Perry from 'A'

Note: This interview was originally posted last year but then lost in our infamous sever crash and has only just resurfaced. It took me too long to transcribe to be left in the vaults!

Not so long ago 'A' were playing the main stage at Download, headlining big Academy venues and touring the world, then it all went a bit pear shaped resulting in the band splitting for three years. Last year they came back for a short tour with The Wildhearts and have just undertaken their first headline tour for four years. We sat down with singer Jason Perry before their Manchester show to find out why it was right to return and their plans for the future?

R13: Up until the Wildhearts dates at the back end of last year you'd had a 3 year hiatus, remind us of the reasons for that and why it felt right to return now?
JP: Well the band was pretty much over really for various reasons. It just felt like we had made the album, sat on it for a long time, toured and gone from playing big places to smaller and the audience was getting smaller and younger; plus we were all hitting 35 and Mark had been touring his whole working life, away from his family. When you're in a band you don't have a life and we thought are we touring just for the sake of it just to hang on in there or shall we knock it on the head and try and get our lives back together? We loved every single minute of being in the band but another six months and we would have started resenting it and our families would too so we knew we were playing the Astoria and that seemed like a good time to end it, so we did.

I went straight from there into the studio, making records with other people, got a songwriting deal with Warner's and I've been producing and writing ever since. Adam managed me and we set up our own record label, Giles is at the BBC, Mark was in another couple of bands, Dan went to Radio One and Adam and Dan are still in The Bloodhound Gang, so we've all been busy. We've got this guy on our label Matthew P and we got him a good agent, Steve Strange, who used to be our agent ten years ago; we got drunk and he said maybe we should reform 'A' again! I thought he was joking, the next day he phoned me up and said 'I've booked a tour here already, do you want to do nine dates or thirty?' so I said nine and here we are!

R13: You mentioned that you set up your songwriting company, it's been pretty damn successful!
JP: Yeah it's been excellent, we've had five number one's, six top tens and we're writing for Myley Cyrus this year so it's been brilliant. The production side of things has been brilliant for me, I'm doing Kids In Glass Houses album at the moment and it's all I've ever wanted to do. I learnt so much from working with the big producers we worked with in 'A' and that was always my big ambition you know? Between 35 and 50 I'm thinking that's what I should be concentrating on now. My experience in 'A' really helped with that because I know what the band is feeling like, things like not using a vocal booth, I never do that, I don't know anyone who likes it so lots of little things like that have set me in good stead really.

R13: Does the success of that take the pressure off 'A' financially, as that was one of the reasons given for stopping? Does the success of that allow you to do this almost at your leisure?
JP: Oh yeah we had no money! This is like a holiday for us now. It would be nice if we could build it up so that we made a bit of money at the end of each year! We're going to make some more music next year so there'll be outlets...
R13: I was going to ask you about that, there has been talk of a new album...
JP: Well I don't know if it'll be an album or an EP, it's so hard to make an album but it's got to be amazing whatever we do! Because I'm a writer now I'm not going to go and write something really good for someone else and put out something that's not as good for mine! So it's got to be something really special but at the same time we're not twenty anymore, I'm not saying that I'm turning into Sting or anything!
R13: So have you started that process yet? Have you done any writing for it?
JP: We have started a little bit but it didn't feel quite right, I mean a couple of things have grabbed me so far but we've got no further than little demos but we will do next year.

R13: Do you have anything in mind in terms of the sound you're going for? As you moved on through 2nd, 3rd and 4th albums you gradually brought in a more mature sound with more of a straight rock feel rather than the punkier edge you had at the beginning.
JP: Yeah, I personally feel that (& Mark won't agree) looking back the most honest album we made was 'Monkey Kong', which was less rock, probably a bit more indie and Beastie Boysish and each album has had some really good moments on but 'Old Folks' and 'Foghorn' from the first album, those are obviously songs that I really love but the songs from the last album that I like are songs like 'Die Tonight', which are a bit more laid back and that's where I'd like to go. Not necessarily the big rock riffs, loads of bands are doing that, but if you could make 'Monkey Kong' now it would be less bratty but it just took everything we were about at the time and put it on an album and we should do that now about how we are now.
R13: I must admit 'Foghorn' is the one for me that really leaps out and slaps you in the face!
JP: Yeah and I love that and I didn't think I would enjoy singing that as much as 'Going Down' but I do, it's brilliant cos it really feels like it's us. All we ever wanted to be was to be in our favourite band and that was another reason for splitting up, because we weren't! It was all about business by the end so we'll see anyway.

R13: So if that does happen I guess you'll be looking to use your own label and do it yourself?
JP: Yeah we've got all the infrastructure in place now for anything we need. I don't know if we'll make an album or do EPs and do it through a site or even give it away, not sure yet.

R13: You don't have Dan performing with the band on this tour and you've got John Mitchell from It Bites in on bass, was it disappointing that Dan didn't want to do it?
JP: Yeah it was a bit, I can't say it wasn't, we're really close to Dan still, I spoke to him today and Adam's obviously still in the Bloodhound Gang with him but who's to say it won't happen eventually? The whole thing about splitting up was that you have to go off and be your own man for a while and Dan wanted to go off and be a frontman for a while cos he has that personality. You can't tell him what to do, not that I'd want to but I was a bit gutted just cos he's one of my closest friends but John has been brilliant.
R13: Did you know John before?
JP: Not really, met him once before, Adam knew him better. He's a really good musician, it was like can you learn twenty songs in an afternoon and he was 'yeah', he even learnt one on stage the other day that we'd never played! He's amazing, a proper musician.
R13: Is the door open for Dan if he wants to come back in the future?
JP: Oh yeah, whatever really, I should think so if he ever decided he wanted to! Sometimes I think he thinks he might and other times no chance! Depends who he's talking to.

R13: Given the success that the band had before the hiatus how frustrating was it for you at that time when they told you they were going to drop you when the fault was seemingly with the record company?
JP: Oh it was horrible but the thing is that we've always been quite pragmatic, we understand the music industry, which is why we're still in it! It's not a charity and if I'd have been Warners I'd have dropped us as well! 'Hi-Fi Serious' did really well and sold a lot of albums but that sets your stall out and it costs a lot of money to sell albums, people always think labels are ripping them off but they don't realise how much it costs. We were due to do Top Of The Pops when Starbucks came out but we had a gig in Plymouth so the label were saying well obviously you're cancelling the gig? We weren't going to do that so they had to pay for a helicopter that day, then we'd go off and do promo tours where Mark and Giles would be in Spain and me and Adam would be in Scandanavia for a week, which costs a fortune! That year we got made international priority and there was only us Madonna and Cher on Warners and that's when they really press the button and all these things happen, which is fine but you run up this massive debt, which is fine as you're selling records but as soon as you stop selling records a major label just looks at it and says you're on the decline. We knew that would be our last album if it didn't go gold here, which it didn't, it only sold 35,000 or something like that, which ironically would be quite good now! But it's hard to sustain that level of appeal so we looked around for another deal but at that time the music industry was just about to start imploding. The next week was just horrendous!
R13: Must have been a major comedown?
JP: It was like getting a divorce from four people, there's no way you can describe how empty it feels. I was sat up in bed wondering what I was going to do even though we all had jobs. Just not being in a band was so weird, it consumes you, everything you buy is because you're in a band!

R13: Do you have any aspirations for the band this time around?
JP: Yeah, the aspirations are to have a good time! I've only seen Mark twice this year and he's my oldest friend...
Mark: ...and I am old...
JP: So even to spend some time together on that personal level and hopefully enjoy it and it's been miles better than any of us might have hoped. Last night in Leeds was amazing, one of the best gigs we've ever done!
R13: What sort of crowd have you been getting?
JP: It's been amazing, the only gig that wasn't full was Glasgow, it was busy but not rammed but fortunately it was quite an old audience and they were all quite big so they filled the space! It's nice that there's no reason to come and see us because there's no song to promote so people must really want to come and see us because they've had to find out for themselves.
R13: That must be quite encouraging?
JP: Yeah it's great so next year maybe we can get some press and really build it up?

R13: Any plans for touring beyond this?
JP: Yeah we'll get to the end of this then next year we'll do some writing and then hopefully some summer festivals. There's a lot of interest coming in from Europe and Japan so we'll start doing that and then we'll definitely do this again probably around the same time, which is quite a hard time to tour but it suits us. If we can get bigger venues and hopefully a release as well it's worthwhile doing.
R13: Have you got any festivals in mind?
JP: Well any that will have us really! Haha. We used to love doing Reading and Leeds and the ones in Germany, we used to love those – you see Adam is lucky he still does them! I'm so jealous of him, I'm in the studio and he's doing that, all flight cases and catering.